A novelist speaks

I'm very pleased to announce that I've finished my novel. Finally.

While I had the story in mind for some time, the actual writing took seven years.

The first draft was thrown into the fireplace one winter night in a fit of disgust, the second shredded after my poodle had its fun with it, the third was lost on my laptop in an unfortunate encounter on the train from Clermont-Ferrand to Paris.

The title is Monsieur Ambivalence.

A critic who obtained a reader's copy hailed Monsieur Ambivalence as 'an old-fashioned experimental novel and a new-fangled sermon or screed in which the individual is all-or-nothing--both a stranger in a strange land and all too familiar with himself'.

My publisher is insisting on publicity this summer--a book tour, readings etc. etc.--but I'm deep into the writing of my second novel and reluctant to take my eyes off the prize.

I've decided to stay put in a small village in the middle of France and plug away on my latest fiction, The Narcissist and His Family.